medicine

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   the learned profession that is mastered by graduate training in a medical school and that is devoted to preventing or alleviating or curing diseases and injuries

   They studied medicine in hopes of helping people.

2. 2
   noun

   A substance which specifically promotes healing when ingested or consumed in some way; a pharmaceutical drug.

   This medicine has fewer adverse effects than others in its drug class.

3. 3
   noun

   Any treatment or cure.

   A legislative remedy might be some harsh medicine; is that cure worse than the ill?

4. 4
   noun

   The study of the cause, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of disease or illness.

   She's studying medicine at university because she wants to be a doctor in the future.

5. 5
   noun

   The profession and practice of physicians, including surgeons.

   The history of medicine can be discretized into eras with differing relationships between physicians and surgeons

6. 6
   noun

   Among the Native Americans, any object supposed to give control over natural or magical forces, to act as a protective charm, or to cause healing.

   The North American Indian boy usually took as his medicine the first animal of which he dreamed during the long and solitary fast that he observed at puberty.

7. 7
   noun

   A philter or love potion.

   If the rascal have not given me medicines to make me love him, I'll be hanged. It could not be else. I have drunk medicines.

8. 8
   noun

   A physician.

   I have seen a medicine / That's able to breathe life into a stone

Etymology

From Middle English medicin, from Middle French medicine, from Old French medecine, from Latin medicīna (“the healing art, medicine, a physician's shop, a remedy, medicine”), feminine of medicīnus (“of or belonging to physic or surgery, or to a physician or surgeon”), from medicus (“a physician, surgeon”). The extended sense of "Indigenous magic" is a calque of Ojibwe mashkiki (“medicine”) or mide (or cognates in related languages) when used in compounds such as Grand Medicine Society, medicine lodge, medicine dance, medicine bag, medicine wheel, medicine man, Medicine Line, and bad medicine o…